Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This is Constructive Voices. Constructive Voices, the podcast for the construction people with news, views and expert interviews. Hi, this is Jackie Deberka for Constructive Voices. And today I'm with Stephen Barrett, who you may have heard speaking about COVID and Cork and Ireland, I suppose to some extent in the last episode. Now, Stephen is the program manager, whole life carbon lead for the Irish Green Building Council and he's very involved in a specific project at the moment which is EU religion and obviously very exciting for the times that we're living in. Stephen, thank you so much for taking the time again to speak to me today.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: It's nice to be here.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: I'm Stephen Barrett. I'm the whole life carbon program manager at the Irish Green Building Council.
I joined four years ago and I've spent all of that time trying to drive the agenda on more carbon efficient buildings.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Fantastic. Now can you give our listeners, Stephen, a brief overview of what you call epbd, which stands for Energy Performance of Buildings directives.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Yes. So the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive is the EU directive that really is responsible for your energy performance certificate. So in Ireland, that's the building Energy rating system.
We have the Building Energy rating system as a direct response to the epbd. It was updated last year. The EPBD was updated. So we now have more obligations to fulfill over the next three years.
The energy performance that people are familiar with, you know, the A to G rating system of how a building operates is changing.
The thrust of the EPBD is moving away from just energy and more to emissions.
One part of it that we're going to explore in more detail is this life cycle GWP assessment, where instead of, or rather as well as the operational energy requirement of your building, there'll also be a requirement to quantify the whole life, the lifecycle, carbon emissions of the building, which is pretty complex. So I think that's what we're going to talk about mainly now.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Sure, yeah, absolutely. Do you feel, Stephen, EPBD could spark a design revolution in the built environment?
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Yes, I think it can and I think that's what it's designed to do.
There's something that's not really understood with life cycle assessment is how it doesn't just affect the individual building, what it does is it signals to building material suppliers that you want different materials to build your building from. So that means that manufacturing processes change, that people actually question more about how they source products.
And so when you question how you source it, then the supplier, in order to maintain their market share or increase, tries to then promote their products.
So it's kind of a way of looking into the factory, if you like, of your building, rather than just looking at the cost of the products that you're getting.
But yes, I think it definitely does have the potential, if it's implemented right.
To drive building designers to look at different ways they construct buildings and the materials that they construct them from is obviously huge.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: And I remember when we did our research conversation, you mentioned that really the penny hasn't dropped yet across Europe. And you know, there's a lot of key challenges. Steven, what do you feel that those are mainly?
[00:03:57] Speaker B: Yeah, so what we're seeing in other countries, countries that are further down the road is that the building designers are looking at making the building not just more efficient in operation, but more efficient in material and that material being sourced more carefully.
So it's not going to be business as usual for so many people in the industry, from the designer to the manufacturer, to people deconstructing buildings, because used materials should have a greater value than they currently do.
So I think the supply of materials is going to change a lot. People are currently just measuring or trying to get to grips with what is the carbon emissions associated with my concrete. But once we have a body of knowledge and people with expertise in that area, we're going to start saying how can we change it, how can we reduce it? And that has that knock on effect to everybody else in the industry. I don't think that's been realized yet. People currently are just trying to figure out how to do it and what are my numbers for my building.
But when we start seeing it on a more general scale, then we'll start seeing industries around it trying to supply better information.
And in order to supply better information, they'll want to be improving their processes so that the information is not only good in terms of the quality of the information, but the values that their clients want to see.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: Right. I mean, it's a very complex topic to say the least. Again, but one of the things that you did mention previously is the need for BIM models to meet these kind of demands.
How prepared are the design and construction professionals, do you think, for that transition?
[00:05:57] Speaker B: So one thing with doing in a lifecycle assessment of a building before the building is built is you need to really kind of plan the scenario, how you expect this building to be for the next 50 years or whatever it is.
Not only do you need more information about the products in your building, you also need information about how it's going to perform over its lifetime and what you're going to do with it at the end of its lifetime. So these things just aren't thought about at all at the moment. Currently we just think about costing. Where BIM comes in is it should. It should give us more accurate design models and all of the information around those designs in a lot more detail than we currently do.
IGBC are investigating how to make this as easy as possible and as low cost as possible. We are looking at IFC Industry Foundation Class as a way of different BIM softwares talking to each other. One thing that I'm finding is a lot of pushback, saying that we just don't use bim. We do drawings, but we don't use bim.
And it seems to me that that is the same argument as saying we use pen and paper and not computers. We don't right now. But as we learn the benefits, we start to look at new technologies. And I think the EPBD is going to push people more towards BIM as a result of not just this, but certainly this will be a big part of it.
[00:07:37] Speaker A: Certainly to do those type of calculations that no one in the industry is right now doing, you know, that's not a design job, is it?
[00:07:46] Speaker B: No. We did a prototype project using Excel spreadsheets, trying to quantify bills or quantities in Excel and do all the calculations on that. And it was very slow, very painful. But the reason was because we were starting from scratch with the only tools that we had available at the time.
We learned a lot from it. One thing that we learned was if people are prepared in advance, as in told, you're going to need this information at this point, then it's not so arduous. It's just another part of the design process.
It's only when you try to do it from scratch on a building that you've already finished, it's really difficult. But if you're doing it as part of the design process, it can be an aid to design. It can help you understand where you can be more efficient, not just in terms of carbon, but in terms of materiality. If you're using less material, you have less cost in the form of your building. If you can simplify a building, again, it doesn't just reduce your carbon, it will reduce your operational costs and your maintenance costs. Doing this kind of assessment, it's not just about a regulator forcing you into doing something for the sake of their reporting requirements. It can help you save costs and add value to your building throughout its life cycle, not just the capital cost of building it and then whether it's for speculative sale or rental or whatever, there's more value in it there definitely.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: I suppose what comes into my mind, Stephen, is younger people that we spoke about briefly in the other episode, you know, they're going to look at a house or an apartment or an office that they intend to rent or buy and they're going to have all this information up front about, okay, the price of the property is this or the rental price is that, but this is what you're going to spend on energy each year to run it, you know, for X amount of people or I assume it'll be like, you know, there'll be a level of the building itself, but also the inhabitants, I suppose.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: Definitely. A well designed building and certainly an energy efficient building can command a higher rental premium.
Taking the time to take these things into consideration at the beginning can have a massive cost benefit as well as the carbon benefit. If you're able to demonstrate to a potential tenant that they'll be paying much less in their energy bills, then you can charge a premium for your rental.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: That's it. It's the same when it comes to biodiversity. You know, I've had this conversation with other experts. If the place has lots of beautiful nature, well, you're talking about an upmarket place straight away.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of clients, tenants, businesses are recognizing these things are important to their workforce. So being able to provide your workforce with a better environment definitely attracts employees that you want there.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: What would you say are the limitations of relying solely on the old ways versus how BIM can improve both compliance and performance?
[00:11:09] Speaker B: So relying on the old ways, you're going to be doing your calculations very slowly, cross referencing numbers that will drive you crazy.
When we at IGBC are looking at open source free BIM where you can attach all of this data to a model early on in the design phase so that as you design, you're getting feedback. If you stick with the old ways, you will have to do a design, assess it, do another design, assess it, and it will just be long and painful. We're looking at ways that you can put the numbers into the design as the design evolves. So you can change a wall, remove a wall, you get an instant change in the numbers that B is asking for.
So if you stick with the old ways, you're just going to be iterating very, very slowly. If you move over to bim, the way I see it is you can then it becomes a design tool for all the other benefits, not just your Carbon figures being as low as possible.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: And I love the fact that I latched on to one word is open source and obviously the other word being free. You know, open source. For people who don't understand that is the fact that, you know, it isn't. I'm not going to name any brand names, but it's not made by a particular brand and therefore can't be changed. Basically means that people who are technical enough can go in and improve the system and it's free, isn't that right?
[00:12:41] Speaker B: There's a particular open source platform that I always push. I don't know if I can mention it here. There's an open source bim called Bonsai Bim. If you go to bonsai bim.org you can download the whole BIM software there and start designing straight away. You can also create add ons to it because it's open source.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: Fantastic.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: If you're technically capable of anything that you can dream up, you can add on to it.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: Fantastic. So I'm going to assume that's Banzai, like the. Like the trees. No?
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Yes. Yes.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: B for Bertie, O for orange. N Nothing. S for sugar. A for apple. I for Ireland. That wasn't the best phonetic Alphabet, but that's how it's spelled, isn't it?
[00:13:25] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: Fantastic. Fantastic. That's great. Now going on to Article 7 of the EPBD.
Why do you describe its publication as a kind of a starting gun?
[00:13:39] Speaker B: It's a starter gun. Because we've got a timetable between now and 1st January 2030 to by 1st January 2030, we should be calculating and disclosing life cycle carbon for all buildings, all new buildings. I'm not sure if it's going to apply to renovations yet, but definitely all new buildings. By the end of next year, 2026, we need to be feeding back to the European Commission on a roadmap that details limit values. That means saying to the EU, by 2030 we will be stipulating that no building can have a carbon footprint of x kilos of CO2 per square meter. And then by 2032 it will be a lower figure and by 2034 it will be a lower figure. So it's about the first thing we need to do is establish that trajectory. To do that we need a method for calculating the numbers that feed into that trajectory.
In 2028, we'll start measuring buildings over a thousand square meters. So any building application over a thousand square meters would need a life cycle assessment done on the design by 2030 that's going to apply to all buildings.
So it's a starter gun on how we quantify carbon emissions. Not just the operational emissions that we always have done, but the building itself.
For Ireland, this is primarily currently concrete and steel, the things that affect that figure the most. So we're going to start looking at.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: That now when the day arrives. Stephen, how do you anticipate the industry will respond once, you know, the specs are kind of formally published?
[00:15:43] Speaker B: I think industry will be.
I think there'll be an array of responses, but I think a lot of people really want this. They want clarity.
People have been doing life cycle assessments in their own ways for a few years now, but they all differ. Everything around the calculation differs, meaning it's really difficult to compare two people's figures, so two people's results.
It's almost impossible to tell which is the better in inverted commas building when people have assessed in completely different ways.
So people are already interested in it, but there's no consistency. I think this will bring consistency and hopefully it will bring the right tools for doing it as easy as possible.
It will give us a kind of a stable platform to work on that we currently don't have. I think industry is ready for that. I think building designers want to do the right thing. I think clients want to do the right thing.
They just don't know what the right thing is yet. Because we don't have a framework to work in. This is going to give us that.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: Okay, fantastic. Obviously it's hugely important to arrive at that point. Now, are there any tools or platforms that you feel are doing a particularly good job of cutting through that noise.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: You want me to mention?
[00:17:06] Speaker A: Yes, you're allowed to.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: It's very hard to argue with one click. Lca, who are the market leaders in Europe at the moment?
[00:17:16] Speaker A: What do you like? What do you feel you know is good about Wunderlich lca?
[00:17:20] Speaker B: They are always innovating, they're always bringing out new tools to make the job easier. I was just on a call with them yesterday where they were launching more tools to help you look at your building at the earliest possible stage. So just kind of, how big is my building going to be? What's it going to be made of?
Helping you estimate the materials that that's going to require and therefore the emissions involved in the manufacture of those materials. And this is, you know, literally a kind of a. It's like a five minute back of an envelope sketch of a building.
But the tools that they offer just make it incredibly easy. There is a Bit of a steep learning curve, but once you've done it, I think they are by far the most advanced in Europe on this.
[00:18:09] Speaker A: Okay, so yeah, we have an episode with Panu Panason, who is the managing director of that company. So let's just talk about Ireland. Now. You're currently working with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, seai, to implement these requirements. What are the top priorities, Stephen, in your role?
[00:18:32] Speaker B: The top priorities really are to figure out where we are. The first priority is to learn from other countries. So the Nordics and France kind of further down the road on this. So trying to figure out what has worked in those countries and what the challenges were, that's the first thing. The next thing is to nail down that methodology that meets the requirements of the epbd. So what exactly is the calculation that needs to be performed before the building is built in order to fulfill the requirements of upbd? That needs finalizing when that is finalized. We also need tools to make it as easy as possible to do that.
So the things that One Click currently offer, if you have a One click license that make life easier, how can we create tools that, that do a similar thing for.
For everybody? You know, for smaller businesses that don't necessarily have the volume of business to justify paying a consultant or a license to do these kind of things. How can we bring tools to these people to make their jobs easier and then just understand the kind of the education requirement that's going to have to go into it too? So what's the current level of knowledge?
What do people need to know in order to be able to.
It's a bit like the old BER certifier training, what we need to do. But whereas BER happens after the building is built, this happens before the building is built. So understanding the audience and their educational needs is also a big part of it.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: Okay. Talking about educational needs, are there lessons you feel that we can and are learning from the Nordic countries or any other leaders?
[00:20:19] Speaker B: We at IGBC have been running educational courses on this for four years, four and a half years, which gives a really good background on it. There are particular standards that are common to everybody, to all nations, and once they're understood, then everything else kind of falls into place after that. I can't really comment on the Nordics yet because I'm just in the middle of, or rather just starting the research.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: And what lessons we can learn from them.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: Sure. Okay. So we can cover that some stage in the future when we have an update in the next year. Or two to see how everything is coming along. Stephen, you've been not long ago in Brussels, obviously with other representatives from various EU member states, and you've mentioned that you have been doing training for the last four years there. How is Ireland looking comparing to other countries in terms of readiness for this?
[00:21:14] Speaker B: I'd say we're in the middle.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:21:16] Speaker B: The Netherlands, but then we.
We're pretty good, I think, in the sense that we've anticipated the EPBD quite well. The prototype methodology that we have been using for the last couple of years seems to be very close to what the EPBD requirements going to be. So we've got a good understanding.
We just need to develop the tools and the guardrails, if you like, when you say how we are compared to other countries. So, yes, we're behind those ones that I've mentioned.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: But 27, they were about six.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: You know, obviously I'm Irish, so I, I like to say, I say I am allowed to say these things. You know, we're a smaller country, obviously, and all of that sort of stuff. So I think being in the sixth position is okay. You know, you mentioned prototype methodology. Can you expand on that a little?
[00:22:10] Speaker B: Yeah. So because the methodology is based on this standard, European standard EN15978, we were able to design a methodology without the EPVD guidance because we knew roughly what it would entail.
So we developed that and we tried to then recruit building designers to input the information of the designs that they have to try to establish a baseline for Ireland to try and figure out what's our current embodied carbon footprint for different building types. And the project went very well. We got good feedback from industry.
And because it was funded as part of a project called Indicate, which was funded by the Laudes foundation, it wasn't just in Ireland. It was also.
There was also funding available in Spain, Czech Republic. And because we did a good job of our methodology, because we had a good understanding of the standard EN15978, Spain and the Czech Republic took on our methodology. Spain are developing it into a BIM offering.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: There's a second wave of Indicate happening now with Austria, Italy, Luxembourg and a couple more countries. Hungary, Croatia, I think. And they are learning from what we did too. So it's kind of proliferating through countries through this Indicate project. The reason that I put us kind of just behind the Nordics was because we had that good understanding and now we're sharing it so that Europe as a whole gets a consistent approach. Approach.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: So, yeah, you must feel presumably quite happy about that aspect of it.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: Yeah, very happy. Feedback is good. I'm always expecting somebody to point out a flaw in it, but so far so good. So I'm pretty happy.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: Good. Excellent. Congratulations. That's very, very good. When those days arrive, how do you see that panning out?
[00:24:18] Speaker B: I see it as BIM models. I see as people using paid for software and open source software, using IFC files, which is industry foundation class files for sharing building models in different BIM software. I see it being based on that. You've got all the extra information as well as the drawing held in your BIM model. You can share it across different softwares. It can be used during your design rather than assessing after your design. And then it can be used by the SEAI or whoever is administering the system to look at your model, look at the results, compare it to others, understand outliers. Because it is complex, I'm not sure that every building is going to be assessed in every detail.
So, you know, we can focus by doing it in BIM and doing it consistently, we can assume that those that are coalescing around a certain figure are reasonable. It's the ones that are incredibly high or incredibly low that we need to look at in more detail and understand how they're doing that. And the ones that are incredibly low, if they're incredibly low because they're brilliant designs, then we can learn from those designs and move the whole, you know, that, that central lump, we can start moving it towards that level one. So it's all about sharing information.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: Okay, so yeah, plenty of sharing and collaboration. Stephen, what will you be watching closely over the next six to 12 months in terms of these developments?
[00:25:57] Speaker B: The finalizing of the methodology. I think the European Commission are going to put out a kind of a general methodology which kind of sketches out the overall requirements, but there will still be details that each member, states, state has to finalize for itself. So understanding exactly what they are and also looking at, as I say, the BIM modeling, how we can make open source free models easier to use.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: Okay, that all makes perfect sense.
How can professionals in the built environment best prepare for these coming changes?
[00:26:40] Speaker B: They can go to the IGBC website and do the Embodied Carbon 101 course.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: LCA do have a wealth of information in their resources section, so that's free to anybody. It's always worth looking at their website for the latest knowledge on European thinking.
I'd say they'd be the two best resources.
[00:27:01] Speaker A: Okay, so the Irish Green Building Council is I for Ireland, G for green, B for building, and C4 council, ie for those people who don't, don't know it or aren't familiar with the website. I suppose what comes to my mind, Stephen, is is there any particular message you'd like to leave listeners with who are, you know, on the front lines of sustainability and building design?
[00:27:28] Speaker B: Yes. Just begin assessing. Don't worry about the result, because it's the assessment that changes behavior. The result is just the result. But the actual questioning of your building is what will make you make different design choices.
So don't worry about the result, just do the assessments.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: Fantastic. So that takes a little bit of pressure away from people and obviously looking at the website that we've just mentioned and one click LCA with their resources can, I suppose those are the things that we'd like to leave the listeners with, really, Stephen, isn't it?
[00:28:06] Speaker B: Yeah. The other thing, just going back to the result, there will be limits, but those limits are not being introduced for a few years yet. So when I say don't worry about the results, there is no penalty or there won't be any penalty until 2030.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
[00:28:22] Speaker B: Yes. Don't worry about the result. Learn the process.
And once you've learned the process, you'll want to change your design.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: You will. Of course, it's for everybody's benefit, isn't it? The sale or rental of whatever property you're working on and for the environment and obviously for all the professionals who are involved who, like yourself, obviously have taken a lot of pride and loads of time in their work to get to this point, isn't it?
[00:28:44] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: That's it. Any final thoughts or you're happy with what we've shared today?
Feel free.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: I think probably a key thing is the earlier on in the design process that you start looking at this, the better the result will be. It's much harder to change a design when it's fully developed than it is early on. So assess early so that you start off on the right path and maybe investigate the EU levels program, which covers a lot more than whole life carbon.
[00:29:18] Speaker A: I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And it's the same advice for all these huge changes, Stephen, that are happening, you know, at the moment in various countries. The same comes to the law in the UK that we've covered in a course and a couple of different podcast episodes. You know, biodiversity and neck gain. It's exactly the same advice. Planning should happen in the pre Planning, really.
[00:29:40] Speaker B: That's when things get locked in.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: That's fantastic. Listen, I think it was really informative. Stephen, thank you so much for your time.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: You're welcome.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: Thank you. This is Constructive Voices.
